Monday’s general strike, called by the opposition, went ahead after President Lukdashenko defied a midnight ultimatum to surrender power.
Three months have gone by since the disputed election in which Lukashenko, who has been in power for 26 years, declared a landslide victory in the former Soviet republic despite the claim by the opposition and by Western countries that the vote was rigged.
Mass demonstrations have been taking place since then and around 15,000 people have been arrested during a crackdown on the protests and nearly all opposition leaders have fled or been jailed.
In Monday’s national strike factory workers chanted slogans and students took to the streets. After having detai .ned over 520 protesters on Sunday, tv footage showed riot police throwing stun grenades and more people men and women, old and young – being arrested and taken away in police vans.
The past was the 11th straight weekend of huge demonstrations in the capital Minsk and in other major cities.
The strike has been called by exiled opposition candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya who has urged Belarusians to block roads, shut down workplaces, stop using government shops and services and withdraw all money from their bank accounts.
If sustained, analysts say, it could open a new phase in the crisis, testing whether the opposition has the mass support it needs to bring enterprises across the country of 9.5 million people to a halt.
Just last week Tsikhanouskaya received the European Parliament’s prestigious Sakharov Award for Human Rights for “the courage, resilience and determination of the Belarusian opposition”.
Pope Francis has said he is following the situation in Belarus and he has appealed for dialogue, for the rejection of violence and for the respect for justice and rights in the country. (Source: reuters and other news agencies)
Hungaryʼs government on Monday filed an action with the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) seeking the annulment of certain provisions in the Mobility Package on the grounds they are discriminatory and run counter to EU climate objectives, state news wire MTI reports, citing a joint statement by the Innovation and Technology Ministry and the Justice Ministry.
Image by frantic00 / Shutterstock.com
The contested provisions impose a disproportionate financial and administrative burden on European haulers and are also impossible to enforce, the ministries said.
The ministries noted that the European Parliament and the European Council had approved the Mobility Package in July in the face of vocal opposition by Hungary and other member states.
The ministries said the Hungarian government had taken a stand against the provisions in all available forums since the drafting of the package started three years earlier.
The declared goals of the new regulations are to protect the interests of truck drivers, while improving their social and work conditions, but the Hungarian government is of the view that the new provisions address existing problems poorly and further worsen the situation of those affected rather than resolving issues, the ministries said.
The provisions run contrary to the principle of free movement of labor, goods, and services; and they restrict the operation of the unified market and national markets with protectionist measures, they added.
The ministries said the provisions give haulers from outside of the EU an advantage, which hurts member states economically and can cause a deterioration in traffic safety conditions for EU citizens.
The governmentʼs CJEU action seeks to exempt haulers from the EU directive on posted workers, to exempt accompanied combined transport from new rules on combined transport, to scrap the prohibition on sleeping in cabs because of the insufficient number of safe rest stops, to roll back the deadline for installing smart tachographs to the originally planned 2034, and to eliminate a rule requiring lorry drivers to return to their base of operations every eight weeks.
In a post on Facebook, Justice Minister Judit Varga said the new rules “undermine the EUʼs internal market and deliberately strengthen the undue competitive advantage of Western European Member States”.
She said that Hungary had been joined by Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, and Romania, in consistently opposing the regulations.
“As we did in the case of the Posting of Workers Directive in 2018, we are taking strong action against EU legislation and we call on the Court of Justice of the European Union to annul legislation that is contrary to the principles enshrined in the EU Treaties and contrary to the freedom to provide services,” she said.
GENEVA: World Trade Organization (WTO) members gave the green light on Monday (Oct 26) for Brussels to slap tariffs on US$4 billion in US imports annually in retaliation for illegal American aid to plane maker Boeing.
A WTO arbitrator had ruled on Oct 13 that the retaliatory sanctions were warranted, but the move needed to be approved by the organisation’s 164 member states before the European Union could go ahead.
During a meeting in Geneva on Monday, “WTO members approved the European Union’s request for authorisation to impose retaliatory measures against the United States for its failure to comply with the WTO ruling regarding US government subsidies for Boeing”, a WTO official said.
According to a list of targets seen by AFP, Brussels is expected to impose tariffs on a long line of imports, including aircraft made in the United States, along with tractors, sweet potatoes, peanuts, frozen orange juice, tobacco, ketchup and Pacific salmon.
Monday’s decision was the latest development in a 16-year saga between Washington and Brussels over support for their leading aircraft manufacturers.
It mirrors the WTO’s move a year ago to authorise a record US$7.5 billion in US sanctions against European goods.
Cardinal-elect Kambanda, in an interview with Vatican News, said the news came as a great surprise to him.
How did you receive the news, and what was your reaction?
It was a big surprise for me, which I did not expect. I was living my usual everyday activities when someone called me with the news. I did not believe it at first. It is a surprise for me. I thank the Lord, for He is the author of history: History in general or personal history. I never ever dreamt of being a Cardinal. It was the Lord who wanted it. I love the Lord, and I consecrated my life to work for Him. Being a Cardinal gives me the opportunity to do even much more for the Lord. I am incredibly grateful to the Holy Father for entrusting me with this responsibility. I love the Church; I enjoy working for the Church, and this will also give me the opportunity to do much more for it.
Your country, Rwanda, went through a difficult period of the Genocide. Today, this country continues to reflect on the wounds of the past and continues to live reconciliation. What challenges do you foresee. as a future Cardinal, chosen at a time when the Pope has just published his encyclical, “Fratelli tutti.” How do you see yourself living this reality in this your new responsibility?
We have been on a 26-year journey after the Genocide. And we have worked hard for reconciliation. It was terrible to see a Catholic and Christian community divided and killing each other during the Genocide. We thank the Lord for the journey we have taken so far. At this time, however, we have reached a level of reconciliation and unity and Pope’s encyclical “Fratelli tutti” has been warmly welcomed in Rwanda. We will continue to meditate and deepen our reflection. The encyclical will reinforce and facilitate our pastoral work of reconciliation. And now yes, I have been given a new challenge in the role of evangelization within the universal Church. I will try to witness to the best of my abilities and make my contribution and share solidarity with others who are also suffering violent conflicts and divisions in the communities.
On 7 May 2013, you were appointed Bishop of the Diocese of Kibungo and then on 19 November 2018, Pope Francis appointed you as the Archbishop of Kigali. Today you have been appointed Cardinal in the universal Church. How do you feel about this sign of great confidence that the Church has bestowed in you?
I thank the Lord for his grace which is at works in his Church all the time –a Church which today faces several challenges. Therefore, we must work hard to share and make the message of Salvation better understood. It is both joy, a great burden, and a challenge.
Are you the first to be appointed Cardinal in your country?
Yes. In the history of Rwanda, I am the first to be appointed Cardinal. In the region of the Association of Episcopal Conferences of the Region of Central Africa (Conférence Episcopal Centrafricaine) which comprises Rwanda, DRC, and Burundi, we have two Cardinals in the DRC. Now it is a great joy for the Great Lakes Region to have one more.
What message do you have for your compatriots in Rwanda, on this joyous occasion of your appointment as the country’s first-ever Cardinal. Also, for the Great Lakes Region, still in need of reconciliation?
I am very grateful to my fellow Bishops in Rwanda and in the region for their collaboration, solidarity, and the work we do. If the Pope made me a Cardinal, it is also thanks to the faith, work, and pastoral care of the entire community. I assure (my compatriots and those in the region) of my collaboration and solidarity, especially for peace and reconciliation, in this region. We live in times of tension, now mixed with the Covid-19 pandemic. As pastors, we need to guide people towards peace, brotherhood, and sisterhood. In this context, the encyclical “Fratelli tutti” will enlighten us and will help us a lot in our pastoral work for reconciliation and fraternity.
Marko Kokic / Unicef
This picture shows Unicef education officer Masood Nassir in Nangarhar teaching a class in Peer Sayed Ahmad Gilani school in eastern Afghanistan
On 17 October, a teacher at a middle school in a town northwest of Paris was beheaded on the street outside of his school. He was assassinated for facilitating a discussion with his students about caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad during his civic education class, which is in conformity with the National Education curriculum. Police shot his killer to death sometime later that same day. French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the killing an “Islamist terrorist attack”, as it appears that the killer was carrying out a sort of fatwa launched against this teacher on social media.
On Saturday 24 October, a suicide bomber attacked the Kawsar-e Danish centre in Kabul. The death toll was estimated at 24 and the number of wounded at 54, According to officials, many of the victims were teenage students between 15 and 26 years old.
In 2019, UNICEF declared that “attacks on schools in Afghanistan tripled between 2017 and 2018, surging from 68 to 192”. The UN agency added that “an estimated 3.7 million children between the ages of 7 and 17 – nearly half of all school-aged children in the country – are out of school in Afghanistan”, with 60% of them being girls. Schools and girls’ education are clearly priority targets on the agenda of Islamist terrorists.
Teachers are increasingly vulnerable to death, injuries and abduction, not only in Afghanistan but also in other Muslim majority countries torn by conflicts with Islamist extremist groups.
Afghanistan, France and others: different countries, same battle
School education is targeted, including in democratic countries, by extremist Islamist ideology regardless of whether it is done in non-violent or violent ways.
Their objective in democracies is to intimidate teachers so that they self-censure and keep silent about numerous points of their political ideology and governance, including: extra-judicial killing, homophobia, gender-based segregation and discrimination, an inferior status of women and non-Muslim people, discrimination, and so on.
Their objective concerning educational programmes is to obstruct their implementation on a number of issues such as: teaching about the holocaust and anti-Semitism, the theory of evolution, the study of the human body, swimming lessons, and the like.
Their objective is to reach Muslim school children with their extremist Islamist teachings through various channels and mould them into active opponents to points of the curriculum that they disagree with.
Finally, the ‘ideologisation’ and takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood of associations addressing anti-Muslim sentiments and hate speech in democratic countries is an essential component of this strategy.
Islamism is a political ideology, not a new Muslim movement
Islamism is a political ideology and must be treated as such. Radical Islamists are not teaching an alternative theology, like the Tabligh Jamaat followers or the Sufis. They aspire to take power in Muslim-majority countries where populations are peacefully practicing and teaching Sunni, Shia and other forms of Islam. In other countries, they try to undermine and manipulate their political, educational and cultural institutions, their societal weaknesses, vulnerable groups within their societies and their generous freedoms. Their objective is to divide and fracture societies with the intent of inciting community-based violence. Chaos is the fertile ground on which they can prosper.
The battle against Islamism in France and other democratic countries must not be against Islam as a religion or against Muslims as their co-religionists in Muslim majority countries are the main victims of this ideology. An increasing number of Muslim leaders and institutions oppose Islamism in France individually and collectively, such as the Conference of the Imams in France and the Union of the Mosques in France. The French state must provide them with full assistance and must combat Islamism as a political movement on every battlefield with the appropriate weapons and partners.
The United States on Monday told the WTO that it regretted the European Union’s seeking retaliatory tariffs for Boeing subsidies, and that it favoured a “negotiated resolution” with the bloc over its subsidies to rival planemaker Airbus .
FILE PHOTO: U.S. and European Union flags are pictured during the visit of Vice President Mike Pence to the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium February 20, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir
GENEVA: The United States on Monday told the WTO that it regretted the European Union’s seeking retaliatory tariffs for Boeing subsidies, and that it favoured a “negotiated resolution” with the bloc over its subsidies to rival planemaker Airbus .
The U.S. speech, seen by Reuters, came at a meeting of the World Trade Organization’s Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) which gave its formal clearance on Monday for the EU to impose tariffs on US$4 billion of U.S. goods.
“In conclusion, the United States strongly favors a negotiated resolution of its dispute with the EU over the massive launch aid subsidies it provided to Airbus. The United States has recently provided proposals for a reasonable settlement that would provide a level playing field,” the U.S. delegation said.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Michael Shields)
European Council chief Charles Michel has criticized Turkey’s actions after Erdogan says Emmanuel Macron needs ‘mental check’.
“Instead of a positive agenda, Turkey chooses provocations and unilateral actions in the Mediterranean and now the insults. This is intolerable. There should be respect to Europe and its member states,” the top EU official tweeted.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier launched an attack on Emmanuel Macron. Erdogan questioned French President’s mental condition while criticizing Macron’s attitude toward Islam and Muslims.
Տեքստում սխալ կամ վրիպակ նկատելու դեպքում, ուղարկեք խմբագրին հաղորդագրություն` նշելով տվյալ սխալը, այնուհետև սեղմելով Ctrl-Enter:
Women and children from Artsakh, who have forced to flee their homes due to the Azerbaijani aggression launched on September 27 against Artsakh, organized another rally on Monday outside the EU Delegation to Armenia.
The participants of the rally are hold posters, reading՝ “Stop Azerbaijan aggression”, “Stop Turkey”, “Recognize Artsakh”. They have also prepared a letter and plan to hand over to the Head of EU Delegation to Armenia, Ambassador Andrea Victorin.
“Today, Artsakh mothers, sisters, women and children, who occurred in Yerevan due to the war unleashed by Azerbaijan and Turkey, have gathered outside the EU Delegation to Armenia with a demand not to stay silent. We urge the European Union not to turn a blind eye to our sufferings. We do not ask for protection but to give a legal assessment of the current developments in Artsakh,” one of the participants said. They also call to stop putting false equivalence between the conflict parties and impose sanctions against Turkey and Azerbaijan.
To remind, number of rallies have been organised in Yerevan in the recent days, including in front of the buildings of EU Embassies and the UN Office.
